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Tears of Piety
Tears of Piety was a world large metal poor planet that orbited the star M26-8. It was located in a section of the stars known as 'Buffer Space', which was an area of contested space between what was officially recognized as UN-controlled territory and parts roamed by the Covenant Remnant. Whether it was because the Covenant actually honored this unspoken agreement or simply didn't want to rush in without causing a full-out war was unknown. Despite this, they rarely tread in Buffer Space, but a few 'hidden' bases crop up in a few systems here and there. Tears of Piety is one of these bases. Planetary Description 'Tears of Piety' is only the Covenant's classification of the world. The UNSC attach the name M26-8b to it. This name means that the planet is the second in its solar system to the eighth catalogued star in the M26 Open Star Cluster located approximately 5,000 light years from Earth. According to what could be seen from covert scans of the planet, Tears of Piety has a metal-poor composition and has a molton iron core. It has a radius of a little over 7,000 kilometers and a surface gravity of 1.72G. The most notable feature of this planet is how utterly inhostpitable it is to Humans and other carbon-based life forms. The first thing that one would notice about the planet is that one of the dominant gasses on the planet is helium, which takes up about 30% of the planet's atmosphere. Nitrogen and Oxygen are also present in the atmosphere at 40% and 20% respectively. The remaining 10% has miscellanious gasses. The Helium is naturally formed within the planet and leaks out through fissures and cracks, almost like less violent volcanoes. The helium is notably present in a layer in the planet's atmosphere, but it also bonds with some of the other gasses, something thought almost impossible since Helium is a Noble Gas, which means that bonding with anything, much less nitrogen and oxygen would be a near impossibility. However, it seems like Tears of Piety has surprised observers in this respect. The rest of the planet is progressively less impressive. The planet has a long 40 hour day, meaning that any UNSC personnel staying on the planet has to go through two carefully calculated sleep cycles. During the day, all windows are closed to simulate an Earth-normal night time, and at night, special slowly lighting sunlamps must be activated to help personnel awaken. The Covenant on the other hand seem to care not for sleep cycles, constantly forcing their troops to stay awake as long as possible, stressing discipline over keeping their troops functioning healthily. Tears of Piety does actually have liquid water on its surface and has tropical regions where plants grow and an ecosystem thrives. This would seem like an oasis on this massive desert-like rock, but the problem with this is that the water on the planet is highly acidic. It is poisonous to many races that causes extreme injury and even death after ingestion. The Covenant have treatment plants that make the water potable though and the castes are ordered never to drink any water that they find, no matter how thirsty they are. In accordance to this, most sea creatures are also unfit to be eaten unless detoxified, but the Covenant do not care for this, as this planet was meant to instill discipline in their soldiers, not reward them with fine dining. Covert ONI bases on the other hand take advantage of their own detoxification centers that make the creatures good enough to eat. The planet is very active in terms of plate tectonics and volcanism. There are approximately 12 plates that cause earthquakes frequently. Covert UNSC scans have shown that the greatest quakes peak at about 6 on the Richter Scale, but given the size of some of the faults on this planet, something that they call 'The Big One' may have occured approximately 23 million years ago that caused a giant gash to open in the earth that's almost a full mile wide, and a hundred miles long. The energy to cause something like this must have been outstanding, easily ranking 10 on the Richter scale. Alongside regular quakes, there are a total of 750 volcanic sites on the planet. Some are extinct, most are dormant, but there are a total of 100 active volcanoes on the planet around the equator. Many of these can reach a size of five to nine kilometers (3.1 -5.6 miles) in height. From orbit, the planet's rotation plus the wind currents cause the smoke and ash to drift across the land forming what is known by the UNSC as the 'Flame Belt'. Overall, Tears of Piety was a world that seemed to be specially created to be a prison, and the Covenant decided it was a good place to set up shop. Nobody would be crazy enough to invade such an inhospitable world, and they could go about their business loading ships and housing troops. Trivia *The name of the planet comes from the Covenant's tendency to give their planets and ships names relating to their religious teachings. The planet was intended to bring tears to the eyes of those on the surface, but they would be tears of religious fervor in reverance to the Forerunners. *This planet had multiple sources for its creation, some of it being Tatooine from Star Wars, but also a planet named Aguerra Prime from The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, where the water was poisonous to Human consumption, but was a tropical environment all the same. Category:Planet Category:Locations